


A Question of Taste

by Oparu



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-07
Updated: 2010-03-07
Packaged: 2017-10-07 19:05:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oparu/pseuds/Oparu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nikola finds Helen's taste leaves something to be desired.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Question of Taste

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to [](http://ellymelly.livejournal.com/profile)[**ellymelly**](http://ellymelly.livejournal.com/) and [](http://givemeyourwings.livejournal.com/profile)[**givemeyourwings**](http://givemeyourwings.livejournal.com/) I can't get Helen/Nikola/Will out of my head.

  
"One fifth Helen," Nikola reminds her, leisurely walking towards the bed.

Rolling her eyes, she pulls the sheet up to cover her naked breasts and waits for him to finish. She can hear Will in the shower and assumes Nikola's been waiting, she wouldn't put it past him to be waiting in the hallway within earshot, to berate her.

"It's tasteless. Crass. So far beyond robbing the cradle that I don't have a clever metaphor," he notes advancing further. "Me! Left wanting for a barb." Nikola's tongue slips over his lips. "Do you know how difficult that is to do?"

"Apparently, not terribly," she retorts, gesturing towards a chair. "I seem to do it fairly often."

He disdains the chair and drops his hands to the bed. "I've always said you were one of a kind," Nikola says, sniffing the air in further disgust. "The stench of human fornication. How the mighty have fallen."

Helen pulls the sheet from beneath him, making sure it's tight around her even though he's seen her nude before. At the moment, she's disinclined to give him a repeat performance.

"If it was just sex you wanted," Nikola rambles, leaning back on an elbow to grin at her. "You know I'm available," he toys with his sleeve, "skilled, reasonably discreet. I know not everyone can teleport in and out like Jackie-boy but you know I can make myself less than visible when required."

"Typical," she sighs, leaning towards him. The bed shifts beneath them and they're so close to touching. Her hair's still damp with post-coital sweat and even then, Nikola's trying to seduce her. He does deserve good marks for the effort. "Though, the encounters you are describing would reduce you to a booty call."

He runs a hand along her leg, making her shiver as he leaves trails of electricity behind his fingertips. "It seems that is what you want. Dirty, fumbling, amateur sex. It's like drinking cheap wine. Or beer-" he shudders. "Is it some kind of roleplay? Your own young version of the damned Simon and Garfunkel whining over a soft guitar that condones the ruining of innocence? You really are slumming it, aren't you? What was it? Innocence was the one thing you hadn't had between your thighs?"

"Perhaps you should base your assumptions not on how I see him, but on how he sees me," she suggests, running a finger down his nose before pulling her leg back away from his reach. Of course, Nikola's still attractive, and she remembers, quite vividly, how talented of a lover he is. He'll never understand that sex sometimes needs to be more then the delicious union of flesh.

He laughs, dryly watching her as she leaves the bed and pulls on her dressing gown. "How the precious protege sees you? Wide-eyed-wonder mixed with purely infantile, canine affection?" Nikola's grin intensifies and she wonders what glimpse of skin has amused him.

"What is it about him that so threatens you?" she asks him, tying her belt tightly her waist. "If he were just a puppy, as you imply, surely I, one of the few people you've ever intellectually respected, would never harbour anything but a passing affection for him that would abate once I realised that I was just wasting my time."

"You let him cuddle," Nikola accuses, flying from the bed to stand in front of her. He looks at her chest, which is unfortunately mostly visible through the thin silk kimono, then raises his leer to her face. "You smell happy." He wrinkles his nose, still grinning in surprise. "Did he take direction?"

"Like he was born to it," she snaps back and brings her hands to rest on his chest, putting a barrier between them. "No matter what my relationship with W--"

"Let's call him the protégé," Nikola interrupts, a finger over her lips. "I like how indelicate it makes you sound."

"Will and I has nothing to do with you," Helen finishes curtly, dragging his finger down from her mouth. "Unless that's what you're after?" She smiles coyly. "Want to see what it's like to have someone respect you?" Her eyebrow lofts and he feigns indifference.

"He's always respected you," Nikola realises. "That's it, isn't it? James and I, even John, though he was strongly influenced by certain parts of his anatomy."

Nikola's hands on her waist suggest he was just as influenced and she scoffs but allows him to continue.

"We thought of you as a woman, who became something more like a man," he finishes, shaking his head. "The protégé, he's always scraping up towards your level, you see something of yourself in that, don't you?" He abruptly pulls her close, whispering coolly in her ear. "You think he sees who you were. That part of you that sought knowledge without exhaustion and believed that she would do her best to change the world."

Nikola's hands run up her back, but his touch is oddly sympathetic. "How could you have known that the world you were so ready to take responsibility for would never let you set it down?"

He nuzzles her neck, almost hugging her, then releases her. "Tediously fucking the protégé, can't make you human again, and if you're bored of your lot, I could certainly research changing your situation." The vampire tone slips into his words, and that temptation runs though her mind before she puts it down.

"At this moment," Helen responds, "I'm disinclined to participate in that experiment." She leaves off 'with you' and speaks with a lack of emotion that seems to frustrate him. She's spent too much time forcing things down to admit them just because she's been asked.

"If you change your mind," Nikola teases, eyes twinkling.

With her hands on her hips, she turns her head to the door. "I'll know where to find you."

His half-bow is both polite and insulting, but she takes it as a compliment. Helen listens for two footsteps before she turns, her belt already loosened and her kimono held together only with her hands. "You're welcome to change your mind as well," she tilts her head towards the bed and lets the kimono fall open as she runs her hands through her hair. "You might learn something from the protégé. He's a quick study."

"Quick at what?" Will asks, walking nude from the shower into Helen's room. He towels his hair and looks from Helen to Nikola. To his credit, he only flushes faintly.

"Apparently," Nikola eyes Will's body with distaste and finishes drolly, "you are."

"Oh," Will grins sheepishly. "I uh- guess I like following direction."

"Indeed," Nikola finishes. "Since I'm overdressed for this conversation," he tilts his nose in disgust. "I think I'll leave you two together."

"Good day, Nikola," Helen wishes him with an amused smile. He did actually squirm.

Will finishes drying his hair and looks at her, eyeing her robe with a half-smile. "That must have been an interesting conversation."

"Nikola's never understood my taste," she shrugs and kisses his cheek in passing on her way to get dressed for the day. "Until recently, I suppose," she finishes and runs her ease over Will's naked, still damp from the shower, body.

"Perhaps you'll find some common ground," Will offers cheerfully.

Helen raises both eyebrows. "We'll see, won't we?"  
&lt;/b&gt;


End file.
